I’m the one in the middle.
I’m a horror writer. It happened by accident (or did it?). I wrote a story and it just wasn’t working. It bored me to read. It wasn’t fun to write.The characters were trite. So I killed them all. They vomited blood and fell with every keystroke. My mind reeled—all the monsters I could unleash, the trees I could deck with garlands of entrails—I was a horror writer!
It made sense. My favourite authors were the proof. Of course I love Steinbeck and W.O.Mitchell. I’m a farm girl at heart. But Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Clive Barker … I rush to the bookstore whenever they have something new. Add Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, Ramsey Campbell, Robert McCammon, H. P. Lovecraft to the list and you start to wonder why I hadn’t figured it out earlier.
In high school my poetry was dark. Full of corpses and bones and moon-washed barren landscapes that reflected the wasteland of my soul (I bring those poems out now and again for a laugh). I wrote short stories. Beach runner eaten by the night, girl in psychiatric hospital talks with imaginary lover (I had a huge crush on a character in a novel at the time), person in doorless prison (I was thirteen and didn’t know this was cliche)—they were all horror.
I’m a horror writer. Boy is it fun.
Erinn L. Kemper 
As I read your story “A Flash of Red”, I thought about my daughter-in-law, Katie. Katie is a young writer whose first novel is due out later this year. Writing under the name of KC Mead-Brewer, she publishes short stories with that same wonderful blend of fairy-tale, fantasy, and horror as she deals with issues of contemporary social and personal relevance. I wrote her about your story, telling her I thought I’d found a writerly soul-mate she should reach out to. Your minds share a rare gift, which I think of as the gift of legend-making. Thank you for your story, and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Michael. I’m thrilled to be in such great anthologies as Chiral Mad 3…that’s fantastic that you’ve read it. Exciting that Katie has a novel coming out. A big step! I’m working on that part, having completed a novel and sent it off to agents to get that ball rolling.
I look forward to hearing from Katie!!!
Cheers.
Hello, I read your story “Where it ends, where it begins” in Black Static. I saw you based the story on Vancouver Island. I live in Victoria. Are you also local? I’d love to meet you if you are nearby. 🙂
~H.M. Friendly
Hello there, Senior Friendly.
I love Black Static and was thrilled they accepted my story. I had another in an earlier issue that is set in Costa Rica (where I live now), though the backstory in that one takes place in Victoria in a big old rental house in the Fernwood area. I lived in Victoria until a few years ago. Now I’m on the East Coast of Costa Rica. Hope you guys are having a good summer up there?
I saw the current issue of Black Static. Another excellent lineup with great art!
I found the story to be gruesome and compelling. Some of the descriptions actually made me grimace (this is saying a lot because I write stories where people’s fingers are flayed over fire, and human females are kept sedated to produce fetuses for experimentation, so it’s a compliment to evoke a visceral reaction in me)
Where did you come up with the idea to write a story about a guy who collects rotting body parts?
Anyway, I’ve done some self-publishing but still haven’t been accepted by a publisher. Do you have any good advice? 😀
~H.M. Friendly